“Optical Images”

Carol’s statement:

The human eye can be teased and entertained, can struggle to find what is real and what is artifice, what is on the surface and what is in deep space. I have produced single shot images that make the viewer unsure of just what is happening within the photo frame.

Sometimes the image flips back and forth, sometimes one cannot tell which is the front and which is the back.  Sometimes, there is a mirrored surface turning the environment upside down. Sometimes, the graphic aspect of the photograph is disarming, and it is rather unsettling to figure out just where one is, or exactly what one is observing.  I call them “optical images,” tricks that the eyes and the brain play with depth of field and uncertain surfaces.

All of these photographs are a single click of the camera. They are not invented or manipulated in post-production.

Carol Isaak is an East-Coast transplant to the West-Coast. In the context of her move, she has found entertaining ways to report on the visual world.  Over time, she has accumulated images (from many locations), that are at once photographic and painterly, reflecting her education as a painter. Her work has been collected in China and in the US.  She has had two one-person shows in Portland, Oregon, one at the Griffin Museum of Photography in Massachusetts, and one as a guest of the Chinese government in Lishui, China. She has been published in both Chinese and American journals, and is a four-time “invitee” into the Blue Sky Northwest Viewing Drawers in Portland, where each portfolio of 10 images resides for a year.

Carols’s website is www.carolisaakphoto.com

 

Kent Krugh is a fine art photographer living in Cincinnati.
kentkrugh.com